Flag Protection Ammendment

Dear Sir: 

    The Flag Protection Amendment is now under consideration in the Senate. The amendment failed in 1995 and 1998 and is now back for the third time.  It is pushed by a national group, the Citizens Flag Alliance, which includes the American Legion.

    The First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech:  "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press .... In applying this brief statement to the complexities of society, the courts have kept to the spirit, rather than the letter, of the guarantee. For example, they have interpreted speech to include "symbolic speech",the interpretation that prevents prosecution for burning a flag. 

    Recent full-page ads of the CFA ridicule this interpretation.  They proclaim: "Speech is just talk."  Yes, speech is just talk, and the press is just printed matter, and if the courts took just that interpretation, the government would be left in complete control of the electronic images of television and the Internet. 

    The CFA claims the issue is a matter of "values", that respect for the flag is a value, and their goal is to preserve it.  Since the First  Amendment makes it difficult to penalize flag-burning, they advocate a  corrective Twenty-Eighth Amendment: "The Congress shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States."  They assume respect will follow when a legal penalty is imposed for disrespect.

    I say the First Amendment itself is a value, that there is an intrinsic worth in the notion that the government cannot imprison a person simply for expressing an opinion.  It is a demanding value, an uncomfortable value, because it requires that I tolerate the expression of opinions with which I disagree, of opinions I may even detest.  Tolerance does not mean agreement with such opinions; it does mean that I don't pressure the government to  imprison their advocates. 

    So those CFA ads making fun of people who say "I'm for the flag, but ..." have me dead to rights.  I'm for the flag, but I'm against an amendment that would be the first limitation of the Bill of Rights ever added to the Constitution of the United States.
   
Davis Cope
June 22, 1999